The Ruin Part 9

The shapes.h.i.+fter naturally wouldn't decide in the affirmative if he detected a dracolich gliding overhead, waiting to pounce when he and his comrades took the bait, but Zethrindor doubted that would be a problem. The night was dark, and just in case it wasn't black enough, he'd veiled himself in a spell of invisibility.

The wolf howled, and another answered. Then dozens of other lupines, some ghostly white like the scout, others gray, came slinking to join their comrade on the high ground.

In Zethrindor's estimation, humans in general were weak, stupid, contemptible creatures. Still he had to concede the cleverness of an elite company formed entirely of werewolves. No wonder these particular pests had proved so difficult to hunt down.

The wolves' bodies heaved and flowed, muzzles retracting, hind legs lengthening, paws melting into hands and feet, fur becoming woolen garments and scale and leather armor. A couple warriors grunted or gasped at the strain of transformation, but so softly even a wyrm's ears could barely catch it. The humans driving and guarding the carts certainly wouldn't.

As the warriors strung their bows and laid arrows on the strings, Zethrindor studied them, trying to pick their druid, his chief target, out from the others. Unfortunately, on first inspection, he failed to spot a telltale sickle, sprig of mistletoe, or the like.

Well, the conscripts with the carts were expendable. That was why Zethrindor had chosen them. So, for a moment or two, he'd permit the men of Sossal to attack without interference, in the hope that the druid would cast a spell and so reveal himself.

Arrows arced whistling through the air. Caught utterly by surprise, tribesmen dropped. The survivors clamored, cast wildly about, tried to ready their own weapons, but by then the attackers' next volley was already in flight. Half the conscripts fell before the rest could even begin to mount any semblance of a defense.

Zethrindor snarled in exasperation. The druid had yet to attempt a spell, and why should he? The a.s.sault was going so well, it only made sense to conserve his power.

But if Zethrindor attacked, that would surely elicit a magical response, and if not, he supposed he'd just have to slaughter the entire enemy force. That had always been his ultimate intent anyway.

He furled his wings and dived at the archers. Some, sensing a disturbance in the air, looked up just in time to take a blast of his pearl-white breath in their faces. Coated in rime, they dropped.

By attacking, he forfeited his invisibility, but that was all right. His appearance was a weapon in itself, one that made some of the bowmen drop their weapons and run screaming down the hill, where the men of the Great Glacier, organized at last and furious to take revenge for the devastating surprise attack, met them with flying javelins, stabbing spears, and hacking axes.

But a number of the skinchangers stood their ground and loosed arrows at Zethrindor. Most missed or glanced off. A couple lodged in his scales, but caused him no distress.

He flung himself to the ground, crus.h.i.+ng a warrior beneath his bulk. He raked with his talons and ripped the heart, lungs, and splinters of rib from another man's chest. A snap of his jaws left a third in pieces, and a flick of a wing hurled a fourth off the hilltop.

Skinchangers scrambled to engage him. Some remained in human form to slash with swords or jab with lances. Others flowed back into lupine shape to bite with their fangs. It didn't much matter. Zethrindor found he could kill them just about as easily in either guise.

The combat was both exhilarating and useful, but where was the cursed druid? He wondered if he'd already killed the wretch and just didn't realize it. Then, in a burst of yellow glare and fierce heat, a salamander exploded into existence in front him. Shrouded in crackling flame, somewhat manlike from the waist up but scaly and serpentine below, the elemental spirit slithered forward, stabbing with its trident.

Zethrindor met it with a puff of his breath. The intense cold blew out its corona of flame like a candle, and it collapsed thras.h.i.+ng in agony. He ground it beneath his foot and looked around, trying to locate the human who'd conjured it.

There! Some ten yards away, a stocky human held a scimitar in a seemingly useless overhand grip, as if he could wield it like a dagger. The swordsmith had cast the silver pommel in the form of a unicorn's head, emblem of the G.o.ddess Mielikki. It was evidently a talisman the druid had flourished to cast the summoning spell.

Zethrindor snarled an incantation of his own, and a barrage of ice b.a.l.l.s hurtled through the air, to hammer the priest and throw him to the ground. He struggled to rise again, but slowly.

Intent on finis.h.i.+ng him off before he could recover, the dracolich charged, and the warriors of Sossal, those who were left, scrambled to bar his path. Blades and lupine fangs flashed at him, and he tore his a.s.sailants into fragments of gory meat and bone.

It only took a moment. But that was evidently time enough for the druid to collect himself, because, as Zethrindor killed the last of the soldiers, much of his dorsal surface, from his beaked snout to the tips of his ragged, decaying wings, burst into flame. The hot pain balked him for an instant, until his innate resistance to hostile magic extinguished the blaze.

By then, the druid had reached a gnarled, leafless, stunted tree and stretched out his hand to touch it. His body began to fade.

With a surge of frustration, Zethrindor realized what was happening. A spell was about to whisk the priest beyond his reach, and since his breath weapon hadn't yet renewed itself, he was probably too far away to do anything about it. He stared, trying to paralyze the human with his gaze, but the druid kept moving. His fingers clasped a branch, and his shape blurred into little more than shadow- Crimson eyes glowing, a dark reptilian form, smaller than Zethrindor but dragon-sized nonetheless, pounced out of the darkness and caught the druid in his fangs. The newcomer wrenched the human away from the tree and shook him like a dog shaking a rat, likely breaking his neck. He then sucked and slurped at his victim, guzzling his blood before spitting the corpse out onto the ground.

Zethrindor had sensed the undead nature of the stranger as soon as he appeared, and wondered if he too might be a dracolich-but then recognized him for a vampire.

The blood-drinker glided forward. Before his transformation, he'd evidently been a smoke drake, albeit a remarkably large one, and still gave off a harsh smell of combustion. A choker of platinum, ruby, and diamond encircled his neck. Zethrindor wondered just how easy it would be to take the treasure, either through intimidation or combat, then set the notion aside for the moment, anyway. With the conquest of Sossal to complete, he had more important matters to concern him. Such as finding out about powerful new ent.i.ties popping up unexpectedly in the middle of the disputed territory.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"I'm called Brimstone," the smoke drake whispered. He glanced about, evidently making sure no potential dangers remained on the ridge. They didn't. Most of the skinchangers were dead. The others had either run away or lay shrieking and moaning in agony. "I hope I was of some a.s.sistance."

"I didn't need any," Zethrindor said. "In fact, I was looking forward to killing the druid myself. Still, I suppose your intentions were good."

"I'm glad to hear you say so," Brimstone said. "I've spent the past couple nights flying around Sossal, trying to locate you. It appears the war's progressing well. What a shame you and the other wyrms will reap such meager benefits from your victories."

We'll see about that, Zethrindor thought, when the time comes. "Why were you seeking me, vampire? What do you want?"

"To offer some genuine a.s.sistance, or, at the very least, information. First, I suppose I ought to provide some context. In my humble way, I'm like you: Sammaster turned me undead long ago, during the course of his early experiments. Unfortunately, after he moved on to making dracoliches, he ceased to pay me the deference which was my due. Our a.s.sociation ended badly."

Zethrindor snorted. "No true wyrm tolerates disrespect from any human, magicians included."

"Is that why you take orders from him, and how he could loan you to Iyraclea as if you were some sort of indentured servant?"

Anger brought Zethrindor's breath weapon welling up to chill his throat and the back of mouth, for all that it would be of minimal efficacy against another undead. "Have a care how you speak to me!"

Brimstone lowered his head. "Pardon me, High Lord. I meant no offense. I'm simply trying to explain why it is that for centuries, I've nursed a grudge against Sammaster, trying to wreck his schemes, and those of the cult he founded, whenever I could. Earlier this year, I learned he's become obsessed with an ancient shrine or mystic's stronghold-some sort of place of power at any rate-located somewhere in the northlands."

"Why?"

"That, I can't tell you. But haven't you suspected there's more to his schemes than he's letting on? Does it really make sense that he'd toil to change the face of the world, only to play a subordinate role in the Faerun to come? Isn't it more likely he intends to set himself above you dracoliches and reign supreme, to continue controlling you as-if you'll forgive my bluntness-he's sought to manipulate you all along?"

"Sammaster is secretive, and naturally, I don't entirely trust him. But he has his uses."

"Obviously. Yet if his covert designs proceed unchecked, if they go too far for anyone to stop them ... Let me continue my tale. I resolved to find and investigate the wizard's hidden lair. To that end, I reluctantly allied myself with the sort of folk you and I would normally destroy. A priest of Lathander. A song dragon. Wyrm hunters. Because they too had resolved to fight Sammaster, and guided by my hatred, I believed that was all that mattered."

A warrior with a shredded belly and legs gave a piercing scream. Irritated by the noise, Zethrindor pulped him with a ground-shaking lash of his tail. "You speak as if your att.i.tude has changed."

"I loathe Sammaster," Brimstone said, "but events have reminded me he's not the only detestable thing in the world, nor is vengeance the only good. No matter how many times I helped them, my miserable allies, vermin unworthy even to speak my name, showed me only scorn. Now their own stupidity has ended their potential usefulness. Indeed, it has turned them into yet another difficulty.

"Meanwhile," the smoke drake continued, "dracoliches proliferate, even as the Rage spreads chaos and devastation, preparing the way for your eventual conquest. I realize now, I can't stop it. Nothing can. The best I can hope for is to be granted an important position in the Faerun that will be."

Zethrindor tossed his wings in a shrug. "You're not a dracolich."

"And only they will reign. Except that's Sammaster's stipulation, not yours, and brings us back to the question of who will really make the decisions."

"Well, I suppose that if you proved exceptionally useful, you might find a role as a king's most trusted officer, or even the master of some small princ.i.p.ality all your own." But not, Zethrindor thought, if he had anything to say about it. Brimstone impressed him as far too wily and ambitious to trust in such a role. Still, why not feign willingness to consider such a concession, and find out what the vampire had to offer in return?

"Thank you, High Lord, that's all I desire. I mentioned that my worthless companions had come to grief. In fact, their current predicament came about as a direct result of Iyraclea's covenant with Sammaster. In exchange for your services, she promised to kill any strangers found wandering on the Great Glacier. It was the wizard's ploy to keep his enemies away from the ruin he'd discovered, a site somewhere in the Novularond Mountains."

Zethrindor c.o.c.ked his head. "Sammaster underestimated Iyraclea if he imagined she'd keep such a pledge without trying to find out why it mattered to him."

"How true. But as you've surely noticed, he is deranged, and such folk, no matter how clever, inevitably make mistakes. At any rate, instead of killing my allies, Iyraclea captured them and put them to the question. Soon enough, they broke and divulged what they knew, with the result that the Ice Queen herself now seeks Sammaster's hidden lair in hopes of mastering the power there.

"As you can imagine, I don't want her to control it, either. Dragons must have it, to guarantee our supremacy in the days to come. But I know my limitations. I don't have the strength to confront Auril's high priestess, gelugons, and frost giants all by myself. But a dracolich leading a flight of whites could do it."

Zethrindor scowled, pondering.

He was far too wise to take everything Brimstone said at face value. The threat of a magic potent enough to grind all dracoliches into subservience seemed particularly farfetched. Yet aspects of the vampire's story dovetailed neatly with his own suspicions of Sammaster and Iyraclea. It explained why the dead man had urged him to serve the tyrant of an under-populated wilderness, and why the Ice Queen had deemed it expedient to send every last wyrm off the glacier.

If some great power lay hidden in the Novularonds, Zethrindor wanted it, and not for the benefit of dragons in general, either, but to a.s.sure the ascendance of a single wyrm: himself.

The drawback was, his army would have to get along without its commander and the rest of the whites and ice drakes for a time, but their position was strong enough that they shouldn't get into any calamitous trouble. Since the tundra landwyrms couldn't fly, his troops would even have some dragons remaining to deter the enemy from attempting anything too ambitious.

"All right," said the dracolich, "we'll go. Rest a.s.sured, I'll reward you if the journey proves worthwhile, and destroy you otherwise."

"Fair enough. How soon can we depart? You understand, I can only travel by night."

Teeth clenched, body trembling, Raryn heaved the oblong boulder over his head, and onlookers cried out in triumph, or cursed and moaned in dismay, depending on how they'd bet. Taegan, who'd arrived too late to place a wager, simply marveled. One expected such feats from Dorn, with his hulking frame and oversized iron limbs, but it seemed miraculous that the squat little dwarf could be so strong.

Raryn tossed away the stone, and it thudded down on the icy ground. Victorious human barbarians and frost giants congratulated him, clasping his hand and pounding his ma.s.sive shoulders, and collected their winnings, mostly in the form of amber beads and ivory scrimshaw, from the losers.

Farther up the trail, Iyraclea, clad in her gauzy white gown, gave the order to form up. Grumbling, folk clambered to their feet, shouldered their packs, and the column tramped on up the steep, slippery path.

Like Jivex, who, scales flas.h.i.+ng rainbows, was flitting about gobbling the insects which apparently thrived in all climes, even those as inhospitable as the Novularonds, Taegan had no need to hike. Rather to his surprise, the Ice Queen had given him permission to use his wings, with the understanding that if he tried to flee, both he and his friends would suffer for it.

He spread his pinions, then noticed how Raryn's mask of hearty good fellows.h.i.+p had dropped away. The dwarf's ruddy, white-bearded face wore a somber frown.

Taegan suspected he knew what the problem was. He refolded his wings and tramped closer to the hunter, so they could have a private conversation as they climbed. In theory, the seekers were Iyraclea's "honored guests," but even so, at the start of their journey, their captors would have moved to break up any such exchange, for fear the outlanders were plotting mischief.

Accordingly, the prisoners had worked to ingratiate themselves with Iyraclea's minions and so defuse their suspicions. Kara regaled them with songs, jokes, and stories. Jivex created amusing illusions. Pavel used his prayers to conjure food and cure fevers. Dorn, Will, and Raryn helped scout, forage, and track game; or performed stunts for their fellow wayfarers to bet on.

None of it changed the att.i.tude of the vicious gelugons, or the silent, emotionless ice wizards. But gradually, the human tribesmen and even the brutish giants relaxed their vigilance.

Though unfortunately, not enough to return the prisoners' weapons. Will had attempted to remedy the lack by pilfering items their captors were unlikely to miss. One of the frost giants, for example, had packed an extra head for his ponderous spear. Taegan carried the double-edged length of iron tucked in his boot to serve as a makes.h.i.+ft dagger.

"I know how you feel," he murmured.

"I'm all right," Raryn said.

"I understand what it is to be ashamed of one's own people."

"Well, it's new to me. I was proud to be Inugaakalakurit. Yet my own village-my own brother!-betrayed us."

"I confess, I wasn't entirely pleased about it, either. But I daresay they believed they had no choice. Consider the Icy Claws. You and I have overcome our share of perils, but I can't even look at the things without my bowels turning to water. Your people had to contend with the baatezu, dragons, and Iyraclea's magic and seizing of hostages. I'm not ready to pardon their treachery, but I do comprehend it."

Raryn sighed. "Maybe the one I should really hate is the Ice Queen, for oppressing them and breaking their spirit, and I do. But the person I'm most disgusted with is me. I promised to keep the rest of you safe, and instead I marched you straight into disaster."

"No one could have foreseen what happened."

"I should have. I should have sensed that the glacier had changed since my younger days. The signs were surely there, if only I'd had the wit to notice. A ranger knows, they're always there."

"Nonsense. The place was a desolate slab of ice when you left, and the same when you returned. Unless we'd happened upon a troop of gelugons playing hide-the-cherry, what could possibly have alerted you?"

Half hidden behind his s.h.a.ggy moustache, Raryn's lips quirked upward. "Well ... nothing, maybe. So I suppose I should stop rebuking myself and concentrate on the work that lies ahead."

"That's the Raryn we toast with br.i.m.m.i.n.g cups." Taegan grinned. "Of course, it would help to know exactly what form said work will take. Is it actually feasible to work with Iyraclea?"

"Maybe. She truly does seem to want to thwart Sammaster. But never trust her. Do you know, she tried to turn Pavel into one of her ice men, and unlike the wizards, he wouldn't even have been of any particular use to her afterwards. The transformation would have broken his bond to the Morninglord and cost him his magic. She attempted it out of simple cruelty, or just so her G.o.ddess could score a petty victory over the power who's her opposite."

"Believe it or not, I'd already discerned that she lacks a certain generosity of spirit. But if she shares our disinclination to see crazed dragons and dracoliches overrun the world...."

Taegan realized Raryn had stopped listening. Instead, the dwarf peered upward, his face intent. His nostrils flared as if he were a hound taking a scent.

"What is it?" Taegan asked "The air's getting warmer," Raryn said, "and I can smell living plants."

"High above the glacier amid these freezing winds? That suggests some sort of enchantment is active hereabouts."

"I imagine so. Which means we'd better make up our minds about Iyraclea fast, because it looks like we've found the heart of the Rage."

The Ice Queen must have thought the same thing, because she exhorted her followers to hurry on toward the mountaintop. Before long, Taegan too could feel the slope growing warmer, until he had to start opening his heavy garments for comfort's sake. Snow, ice, and bare, frozen earth and rock gave way to moss, gra.s.s, and shrubs. The human tribesmen gazed at the greenery in wonder alloyed with mistrust. The huge frost giants, virtually born of cold and possessed of a total affinity with it, sneered and spat.

It seemed likely Iyraclea felt the same, but if so, her eagerness for discovery masked the underlying distaste. "What are you waiting for?" she cried. "Scout ahead!"

The Icy Claws vanished, transporting themselves through s.p.a.ce, reappearing moments later to report to their mistress in their rasping, infernal tongue.

"Pardon me," Taegan said.

Eager to see what the ice devils had found, he lashed his pinions and leaped into the air. Silvery b.u.t.terfly wings a blur, Jivex streaked upward to accompany him. They flew high to obtain a panoramic view of that which awaited them, and it made Taegan catch his breath. The mountaintop was hollow like a bowl, and inside gleamed a castle, or perhaps something more accurately described as a small walled town.

The avariel had only seen an elven city once before, in the dream Amra conjured in the Gray Forest, and the long-vanished inhabitants had shaped that glorious place from living trees. In contrast, the builders of the citadel below had worked in granite and marble, but their deceptively delicate-looking spires and battlements, simple and intricate by turns, embodied a similar aesthetic and achieved a comparable beauty. They'd shared the woodland elves' fondness for broad, straight boulevards and had evidently loved gardens as well. With no one to tend them, the lawns and flowerbeds had surrendered to tangled brush and weeds, but grown mighty with the pa.s.sing ages, the weir trees had flourished. Autumn had begun stripping them of their foliage, and their leaves blew rustling through the vacant streets.

"Curse it," sighed Taegan, addressing the remark to all his fellow avariels, "see what splendor elves create. Everyone but us."

Jivex wheeled past him. "Come on!" the faerie dragon said. "What are you waiting for? Let's find the heart of the Rage and finish up."

As they all searched the crumbling citadel, forcing warped doors, prowling through dusty, echoing rooms, climbing spiraling stairs to the tops of watchtowers and groping their way down into lightless cellars, Dorn stuck close to Kara. Sammaster had left traps at key points along his trail of discovery, and it seemed likely he'd prepared something particularly nasty at the end.

Dorn wished the bard could s.h.i.+ft to dragon form, for she was vulnerable as any other woman in her current shape. But he understood the wisdom of concealing her true nature from Iyraclea and the priestess's retainers, including the paunchy, saggy-bosomed, blue-haired female frost giant tramping along behind them, ostensibly to a.s.sist in their efforts but most likely to keep an eye on them as well. Iyraclea had probably decided it did no harm to slacken the prisoners' reins while everyone stayed together, but more vigilance was required when the expedition split up.

Fortunately, the giantess's bulk kept her from squeezing through the smaller s.p.a.ces, and it was there Dorn and Kara could confer in private, so long as they kept their voices down. Standing in the dark, empty bedroom at the rear of some long-dead dignitary's apartments, the bard shook her head.

"I don't understand," she said. "We've been searching for hours and haven't found anything."

Dorn shrugged. "It took days to search Northkeep."

"Then, there were only a few of us, and we were working underwater."

"Is it possible we don't recognize the ... contrivance that makes the Rage when we see it?"

Kara brushed a stray strand of moon-blond hair away from her face. "It is possible, but I doubt it. In magic, appearance often supports reality. An enchanter puts on an impressive display to create a powerful effect. Thus, I'd expect the source of the Rage to be imposing, awe-inspiring, not some funny little knickknack in a drawer. There's another consideration as well."

"What?"

"You know that even with the proper ward in place, I still feel frenzy gnawing at my mind."